Newsweek May 20-27, 2022

1976 Gossip columns are back “in bolder typeface than ever,” wrote Newsweek, focusing not only on Hollywood stars and high society, but politicians and their families, businessmen, athletes and TV personalities. “Hard-news journalists have begun to explore the loamy terrain of personality reporting,” transforming American journalism into a race for the most entertaining news. Today, even journalists are finding themselves in the gossip headlines. Gossip columnists are zeroing in on Chris Cuomo, who was recently fired from CNN for breaching journalistic ethics. 1949 Judge Harold R. Medina became a household name for his steadfast composure despite histrionics from the defense during Dennis v. United States in which 11 Communist leaders were convicted of conspiracy. Similarly, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was praised for her poise during her confirmation hearings. 1996 “Even the…

FEATURED EPISODE The Parting Shot Your weekly dose of everything pop culture LOW-PRESSURE JOB ▸ A female hacker Mossad agent who is full of chutzpah—and who’s sensitive? No sweat. Niv Sultan comes clean about getting cast as the lead on the hit show Tehran and what it was like working with Glenn Close on the second season. Plus: Series cocreator and director Daniel Syrkin shares how Close leaned into learning Farsi for her role. HOST ▸ H. Alan Scott, culture writer, comedian IN THEIR WORDS ▸ “I loved [the script] because it wasn’t like Israelis against Iranians. It was much more complicated in a beautiful way. There isn’t one specific enemy, there isn’t good or bad.” DON’T MISS THE ROYAL REPORT Palace news—Meghan Markle to the Queen Whose Side Is the Palace Staff on Really? ▸ Tina Brown’s new…

MILLIONS OF RETIREMENT SAVERS MAY SOON be able to invest in Bitcoin as easily as they now buy stocks and bonds, following an announcement last month from Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest retirement-plan provider, that it will add cryptocurrency as an option to the 401(k) plans it offers companies later this year. “This will be remembered as a seminal moment in the evolution of crypto,” says financial advisor Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals and author of The Truth About Crypto. “For the average American worker, their only place to save for retirement is through a company retirement plan. Millions of workers will now start to buy Bitcoin who never would have otherwise.” Just because you can buy cryptocurrency in your retirement plan—whether in the future via…

JUST OVER TWO MONTHS into Europe’s biggest war in decades, Newsweek sat down with former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss a wide range of issues, as the alliance he led during Russia’s initial incursion into Ukraine eight years ago takes unprecedented measures against Moscow following its fullscale invasion. Rasmussen believes that democracies across the globe must form a coalition of their own to beat back a growing rival bloc dominated by autocratic powers. Prior to heading NATO from August 2009 to 2014, Rasmussen served as prime minister of his home country of Denmark. Today, he leads the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, an organization he founded in 2017 with the goal of strengthening the democratic nature of nations as well as the bonds between them. Rasmussen feels this goal is more…

“I THINK THAT HITLER ALSO HAD JEWISH ORIGINS.”—Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov“I don't have the patience for this. So I signed her up for a private teacher.”—SERENA WILLIAMS ON TEACHING HER 4½ YEAR OLD TO PLAY TENNIS“The work of the Court will not be affected in any way.”—SUPREME COURT CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS ON THE LEAK OF A DRAFT OPINION STRIKING DOWN ROE V. WADE“My heart’s broken, and I feel so blessed. It’s a very strange dynamic, to be this broken and this blessed.”—WYNONNA JUDD BEING INDUCTED INTO THE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME AFTER THE DEATH OF HER MOTHER, NAOMI“I DID SOMETHING I THOUGHT WAS FUNNY AND IT WASN’T TAKEN THAT WAY.”—Bill Murray on his new movie shutting production“We weren’t living. We were surviving.”—Aleksandr Vorotilin, a Ukrainian fleeing Mariupol“I’M…

THERE ARE A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN NEW YORK City but drowning in a rainstorm is not something many New Yorkers have ever worried about. That changed last September when the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the Big Apple, unleashing 80-mile-an-hour winds and dumping three-and-a-half inches of rain in a single hour, almost twice as much water as the city’s antiquated sewer systems could handle. The flood warning came too late to save a Nepali couple and their 2-year-old son, who drowned in Woodside, Queens when the sewers overflowed and water roared down hill, inundating their cramped, illegal basement apartment. It did not help a 43-year-old mother and her 22-year-old son, who died in Jamaica, Queens when floodwaters sent a car barreling into the side of their building, causing a…